WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Oct. 29, 2010 — Cesar Silva, Hagey Family Professor of Mathematics and department chair at Williams College, was recently awarded a $36,525 grant from the National Science Foundation in support of the Oxtoby Centennial Conference. The project is under the direction of Silva, along with Leslie Chang and Paul Melvin of Bryn Mawr College.

On Oct. 30 and 31, Bryn Mawr will host the Oxtoby Centennial Conference, featuring research talks and lectures on dynamics. The first set of talks, addressed to mathematicians, will include “Some problems and techniques inspired by John C. Oxtoby,” by Dan Mauldin (University of North Texas); “Continuous versions of the homeomorphic measures theorem,” by V.S. Prasad (University of Massachusetts, Lowell); and a talk by Susan Williams of the University of South Alabama.

The afternoon program will include talks addressed to undergraduate students. Robert Devaney of Boston University will speak on “The Fractal Geometry of the Mandelbrot Set,” and

Fern Hunt of the National Institute of Standards and Technology will give a talk titled “A Model of Routing in Computer Network.” Later in the day, Ph.D. students will give presentations. Additional talks on Oct. 31 will conclude the program.

The event will coincide with the centennial of John Oxtoby, a noted mathematics professor who taught at Bryn Mawr from 1939 until 1979. Oxtoby was the author of “Measure and Category” (1971), which has been widely published for use by scholars and graduate students. He received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1978. Oxtoby passed away in 1991.

Silva began his tenure at Williams in 1984. His research centers on ergodic theory and measurable dynamics. He has published a book, “Invitation to Ergodic Theory” (Amerian Mathematical Society 2008), which introduces basic concepts in ergodic theory without assuming a foundation in measure theory. His articles have been published extensively, in journals including “The Journal of the London Mathematical Society,” “Ergodic Theory Dynamical Systems,” and “Transactions of the American Mathematical Society.”

Silva received his B.S. in mathematics from Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1984.

For more information about the conference see http://www.williams.edu/go/math/csilva/Oxtoby_Centennial_Conf.htm .

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